Natural Gemstone Pendants - handmade by me in the United Kingdom

NATURAL GEMSTONE PENDANT NECKLACES - HANDMADE BY ME (SUZY) IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

I make unique one-of-a-kind pendants using natural gemstones like Agate, Amethyst, Jasper and Quartz but at very affordable prices. If you want to be different from the crowd, then check out my pendants and other items. You will never see anyone wearing the same as you.

I design and make greeting cards too.

Find me on Facebook, Google Plus, Etsy and Folksy

Tuesday, 14 October 2014

I have heard of baked eggs but never seen a recipe or ever tried to make them before so not sure if I make them the correct way or not - if there is a correct way.So this was my first attempt and what I will call Fluffy Baked Eggs.

This is so easy and would probably be a good way for children to like eggs as they could probably make different shapes with them.The longest bit is waiting for the oven to heat up!I will tell you what I did this time but it is an 'Eggs in Process' to see which way I prefer after trying out various options.They do look good and interesting though and hubby was impressed!OK, so I just whisked the egg whites, dolloped them in a pile on the tray, made a dip in the centre and dropped the yolk in and baked them in the oven at 180 degrees for about 8 minutes until they started to go brown.They taste very light and airy so unlike any other version of cooking eggs.I think I will also try putting them in a cooler oven and let the yolks cook for a few minutes before I add the yolks in the centre which may make a crispier alternative with a runnier yolk.But I think you could make these into interesting shapes for the kids and get them involved with cooking them.Happy baking and experimenting :)

I have neglected my Blog for so long because I now post everything on G+. You can always find me on there but I will try to be better and post more on here too.I've been debating whether to keep it running because I didn't think anyone ever read it but when I came one here today I was totally shocked as to how many people read it.Of course you are all probably new people who haven't met me on G+ or haven't got sick of reading my blog yet :)But I should probably post on here more often and it is definitely a good place to put the odd recipe I make up so I can find it again, which brings me to the reason I came on here today.I often (well most of the time really) make up recipes as I go along and 99% of the time they turn out great which makes me feel extremely lucky as some people have many failures even with recipes from a book.I tend to just add things on the spur of the moment and so often my meals / cakes etc. are either very or slightly different from before.If a particular dish turns out really tasty I often try to jot down what I put in it on a piece of paper when I have finished eating it so I can make it again. That's not easy though as I as I don't measure anything and just add a sprinkle of this or shake of that and a dollop of something else. But it would be a good idea if I got myself in gear and not just write these things on scraps of paper I can never find again but on my blog.

Sunday, 4 August 2013

A couple of times over the last week she hasn't wanted to go for a walk even
though our other dog has gone quite happily.

Yesterday she came up and jumped on my lap
at the computer and was physically shaking as much as she did with the
fireworks last year and yet there were no storms around, no loud noises or
anything to be worried about.

After a few minutes I heard OH downstairs
and called and asked him if there was anything for her to be frightened of and
he said nothing he could think of. He said he was just about to take them
for a walk over the fields.

Both dogs and OH went downstairs but as he
got her lead she came back up again and jumped on my lap. In the end she
could be persuaded to go.

They went for a long walk but on the way
back they had to cross a bridge over a deep ditch between 2 fields with hedges
both sides so you can't really see what's over the bridge in the next field.

Our little dogs were off lead and just
going over the bridge when they suddenly met 3 huge dogs coming the other way,
also off-lead (young dogs and not vicious or anything, but boisterous and
totally overwhelming to our little ones - OH recognised one as a Newfoundland
and he said the others were almost as big).

Anyway it frightened our dogs so much that
one turned tail and ran for home but the other one got trapped by the big dogs
on the bridge and fell off - 8 feet down into a couple of inches of water but
the ditch is totally overgrown all round.

OH and the man with the other dogs couldn't
see her or find a way to get down at first, although finally managed it and
luckily she was more or less where she fell rather than trying to follow the
ditch.

So was that the reason she was so frightened before she even left the
house and why she didn't really want to go?

Friday, 12 April 2013

I'm tired and just on my
way to bed, so at the last minute want to put some hand cream on.

But the tube is almost
empty and no matter how much I squeeze nothing will come out.

So I squeeze from the bottom as if I am milking a cow (well I imagine, as I've
never actually done that of course). Still nothing comes out.

Next I try folding the bottom over to try and make it come up like in a
toothpaste tube - but no, they make the tubes so that they wont fold over.
Now this is definitely so you don't get the full amount clearly labelled on the
tube to use at all!

Now I should at this point go and get the scissors to cut through the tube 2/3
of the way down to get at the cream inside and use the top 2/3 as the lid - but
can I be bothered to go and get the scissors - oh no!

So I give it a few sharp shakes downwards to hopefully throw the cream down to
the opening - it works a bit and a tiny amount comes out - sooo I shake it down
some more, open the end and give it a big squeeze.

Yep, you've got it - I get
a whole dollop out - way too much!!!

No amount of rubbing gets it to absorb that much into my hands, so up go the
sleeves and I try rubbing the surplus into my arms too - still way too much.

So down come the pyjama
trousers and I now have enough cream left to moisturise my legs too!

Now if only I had just made the effort to get those scissors I would have been
in bed much quicker and had enough hand cream left for another 3 weeks!

Tuesday, 12 March 2013

As you know I am an owl – I go to bed late
and often get involved online so end up going to bed really late…..!!!

Well last night at 3.30 the house alarm
went off over the road. As my computer
room is upstairs at the front of the house, I looked out straight away to see
if I could see a van or anything suspicious.

OK I didn’t have my distance glasses on as
I was on the computer but I could see the house and the road pretty clearly
even though it was dark although the bushes in the garden next door slightly
hampered my vision at ground level.

There was no movement, no van parked
outside or even in the part of the driveway that I could see, although I couldn’t
see all their front garden because of bushes and I couldn’t see the driveway up
the other side of the house. But no
figures hurrying away either.

I kept watching presuming that something
had triggered the alarm inside and the owners would turn it off in a minute but
no, ten minutes later it was still going.

By now I thought I really should do
something about it and as it wasn’t an emergency I rang 101. The lady on the other end took my details
(which seemed more important than what was going on over the road for some
reason!) and I told her what I knew.

While I was speaking to her the alarm stopped,
although that was probably because it was set to stop after 15 minutes.

Anyway, she told me that the police don’t
investigate when house alarms go off - even though it was 3.30 a.m. and it seemed
that the owners couldn’t be there or they would have turned it off.

She just told me that if I saw anyone
running away or a vehicle drive off to ring “the 9’s”.

Well unless I had night vision binoculars
to hand and could tell them the make and registration of the vehicle, then I
rather think that would be a waste of time too as by the time they got here the
burglars would be well away.

I kept an eye on the house and about 5
minutes after the alarm had stopped, a light came on in a downstairs room which
was on for a good five minutes or so and by the time I went to bed ten minutes
or so later the light had gone out but the security light round the side was
on. But still no fleeing burglars to be
seen, so I can only presume the owners had finally been woken by their alarm.

So…… what I have learned from last night’s
episode is that burglar alarms are a complete waste of time and if you are a
burglar and you set an alarm off, then just sit tight and carry on with
ransacking the house, as the police wont bother you. Then, by the time you leave, the alarm will
have stopped and even on the off-chance that it had woken a neighbour, they
will be tucked up back in their beds and be well asleep again by the time you
leave. No worries about turning lights
on in the house either to make your job easier, as it is even more likely to
make neighbours think that the alarm had woken the owners.

I decided a well-lit outside of the house,
possibly nice crunchy gravel, and of course dogs, are much more of a deterrent
than a burglar alarm.

Sunday, 2 December 2012

Well that was a
dramatic awakening this morning. I obviously watch too many crime dramas
and subconsciously wanted to replicate arterial spray at a murder scene.

I couldn't believe
how much blood there could be and how far it went from a nose bleed when you
aren't awake to plug it.

If I had had a spare hand I would have taken a photo J It must have looked
hilarious and I know that I looked a complete bloody mess!

I can only imagine
how much blood there would be at a crime scene if my simple nose bleed was
anything to go by!

It’s not the first
one I have had while asleep but I guess I normally wake up a lot sooner. A vampire would have been really handy at the
time.

I woke up to a
strange sensation of wetness trickling down my neck and as I moved I realised it
was a nose bleed and just the effort of trying to get up and reach for some
tissues sent it spurting even more.

It had obviously been bleeding for a
while too as my face looked like I had been in a fight with Rambo!

The only part of my
face that wasn’t covered with blood was my forehead. I must have been restless because gravity
hadn’t just let it trickle in one direction.

I suppose that’s why I didn’t wake up sooner as it didn’t run down in
one spot to make me feel wet. I had just
gradually got damper all over.

My blood had also managed
to go own my chin and neck too so the quilt cover was covered as well as the pillow.

A passing thought went through my head as to
how much worse it was than once before when I had a nose bleed in bed on
holiday once and how embarrassing that would have been if it had been as bad as
this.

Honestly it would
have made a great comedy film to see me trying to stem the nose bleed while
trying to get the pillowcase and quilt cover off before the blood went any
deeper.

Obviously my heartbeat got even
faster at the whole affair as the blood was pumping out faster than my tissues
could hold it.

I know the best
thing for the nosebleed would have been to sit quietly with it but I’m a woman
and I knew how much harder it would be to get the blood out of the quilt and
pillow if I didn’t get the covers off the bed quickly.

Maybe I’m lazy but it seemed more important
to me to get them off than to sit quietly at that moment in time. Deal with the mess and then worry about the
bleeding.

I can tell you –
trying to keep some tissue plugging your nose when it is pumping to that extent
with one hand while trying to strip the bed with the other is no mean
feat.

I am on Aspirin and I can tell you
that blood was pumping out at every fast heartbeat more than I could possibly
stem at the time.

I have decided that
they probably don’t show murder scenes on television as they would really look
in real life as even my simple nose bleed caused a total blood bath.

My hand looked as bad as my face and it was
trickling down my chest and down my arm from the hand that held the bundled up
tissue paper to my nose.

I didn’t even
attempt to tackle my pyjama top until I was sure the bleeding had finally
stopped. So I am signing off now as I
have a machine load of washing to put out and a bed to make.

Oh and my head still hurts…from the blood
loss or from the pressure….who knows!

I only wish I hadn’t
been home alone as it would have made some hilarious photos.

Friday, 30 November 2012

But you know the way they teach elephants not to run away
by tying a rope round their leg attached to a post when they are young and when
they get older as long as they have a piece of rope round their leg it doesn’t
have to be tied to anything because they think they can’t escape anyway.

Funny thing the brain and association!

Well our two little dogs will be 3 yrs old in February and
they have a similar quirk.

Our back garden (yard to my American friends) is safe and
secure because we had a dog before which we sadly lost to liver disease. But when we first brought our two little
urchins home it was OK during the day but the first evening we realised that we
could not see the black one when she was out of the range of the patio light,
so we couldn’t keep an eye on her the same as we could the little cream one.

So the next day we did a major construction on the lawn
with bamboo canes and chicken wire folded in half lengthways so that it was
about 2’ high and we could still step over it but it would keep the pups in a
smaller area of the lawn and patio which was lit by the patio light.

We did have to make major changes a month or so later when
one of them kept managing to climb up the fence and over. So we unrolled all the wire again and tried
to flatten it out again as best we could to its full 4’ height so that she
could not climb over it. Of course this
meant that we had to build a make-shift gate to get through as we could no
longer get over the fence either.

Well this fence stayed up for the rest of that summer and
all of the next too but early this year we took it down as we now felt it would
be safe for them to roam the garden and not eat everything in sight.

Now here’s the fun bit – they still go round the outside
circle of where the fence used to be.

It’s not that they ever went outside the fence so never
really took that route as they were always inside it. But now they have the whole garden they still
seem to go round the imaginary fence.
The do go “through” the imaginary fence but not before they have run
round the outside to get to the back of the garden and then they walk on to
what was “their” area. But then they go
back out of “their” area to run back round the imaginary fence again to come back
indoors.

It is so funny to watch.
OK the grass is a lot better round the outside part of the lawn as it
hasn’t been used as a female dog toilet or been dug up by playful puppies but
it is not so noticeable for them to go round the outside. At first they even made a pathway in the lawn
just around the outside of the old enclosure but now they don’t necessarily go
quite so close to the imaginary fence so the “path” is not quite so noticeable.

Dogs always seem to get used to a routine if you have one
but our dogs seem to be really bad at having a definite routine, as they know
our habits I suppose. When I have been
alone in the house upstairs on the computer they have been scratching at the
lounge door in the evening because they know they are usually in there by that
time even though there is no-one in there.

Also they are used to me taking them down last thing at
night to go to bed in the kitchen and the only times that I haven’t been the
one to take them down they just wouldn’t settle and kept scratching the door to
come back upstairs again as they couldn’t believe it was bedtime if I didn’t
take them down.

If they hear a word that sounds remotely like “brush” their
heads whip round as they think a treat is in store because they usually get one
after their brush. There are many little
habits / expectations like this too.

And like all dogs of course, they always try to tell us
when it is walk time, dinner time and treat time.

**Translate**

**About Me**

My blog is about anything and everything. I love crystals and making jewellery (as you can see) plus all new age things, unicorns and pretty things. I am a collector of tarot decks and bears (artist ooak bears and Charlie bears). Soft rock and new country are my favourite music genres. Oh and I'm a Chocoholic and a pet lover.